His campaign continues to be plagued with an increasing chorus of doubters about his conservative posture. His claim to have balanced the budget of Massachusetts without raising taxes was found to be false. In a widely-seen interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press in 2008, Russert nailed Romney:

 

Russert: The head of the Bay State Council of the Blind said that your name was “Fee-Fee”; that you raised fee after fee after fee. That’s a tax … a fee’s not a tax?

 

Romney: A fee — well, a fee — if it were a tax, it’d be called — it’d be called a tax. But…

 

Russert: Governor, that’s…that’s a gimmic

 

Romney: No, it’s, it’s reality. It is. But — and I have no ... I’m not trying to hide from the fact we raised fees. We raised fees $240 million.

It turned out that the amount raised by “fees” was closer to $750 million, but Romney claimed that didn't count, because they weren’t taxes.